Saturday, July 9, 2016

Hard Times

Is there anything left for AC/DC? Staff writer Sheridan Rowan assesses the conditions that prevail.

I suppose it shouldn’t be any sort of surprise that Angus Young, the last remaining original member of AC/DC, hired – to replace ailing vocalist Brian Johnson – a dyed-in-the-wool head case, a wingnut who, among other things, has written racist, homophobic lyrics, and attacked a fan mid-show, precipitating a full scale riot.

He’s also a misogynistic wife-beater. But even that unpleasant factoid had no bearing on Young’s decision to soldier on in the face of total disaster. The guitarist now holds the dubious distinction of replacing three members of AC/DC in the last 19 months, the rock’n’roll equivalent of the Saturday Night Massacre.

Young’s actions since the notoriously reticent band finally admitted that their rhythm guitarist is leaving the band have been, at best, predictably bewildering. Anyone possessing even a modicum of integrity simply would have called it a day after the heart and soul of the band, Malcolm Young, was hospitalized with dementia at the age of 61. But integrity has been in short supply for AC/DC in the last quarter century, as lackluster, generic sub-efforts like Ballbreaker and Stiff Upper Lip have made abundantly clear.

AC/DC haven’t been an actual band for 20 years. Bands are made up of bandmates, and have a muse, and write and play music because it diminishes their souls if they don’t. Once upon a time, AC/DC fit that bill. But the more records they sold, and the more stadiums they filled, the more paranoid and insular the Young brothers became, shutting everyone out (often times their own band members), sacking managers, even taking over lyric-writing duties from Brian Johnson so they had complete, total control over every aspect of the band (and all the royalties).

Rather, this is a business, a company, with Angus as CEO of AC/DC, Inc. And this CEO has no reason to shutter an otherwise decrepit company, because somehow the fans keep showing up, no questions asked, no matter the number of ringers Young stacks the lineup with, no matter how bland each new release – separated, on average, by five years at this point – sounds. Axl Rose played his first few shows with AC/DC sitting in a chair, nursing a fractured ankle back to health. I can’t imagine what the people watching those shows were thinking: I paid $100 for this…? A 61 year-old man in a schoolboy outfit who moves at about 1/15th the speed he used to, and a singer who can’t even walk?

Yes, at 61, Angus is still wearing his schoolboy outfit, despite the fact that he barely gets around anymore, and is painful to watch. This may sound sacrilegious to most, and even a tad ageist; what is this group about without Angus and his Schoolboy Outfit? Isn’t that the very symbol of AC/DC? Isn’t that what the fans turn out for?

I suppose so. And for a long time, I was willing to defend Young’s obdurate devotion to his long-since obsolete role-playing, through the flacid 90s, even into the aughts. But at some point it really does become scary. I speak as someone who has loved this band for over 35 years, whose life trajectory was altered by this band. And I’m telling you, even I’m at a point where it makes me tired just looking at AC/DC 2016, nevermind listening to the AC/DC-by-numbers dreck they dish out twice a decade.

On the latter score, Michael Hann recently went the charitable route: “(AC/DC) had entered the realms of those groups for whom each album was a potential return to form, rather than a new landmark. It’s not that they were making bad records, more that no one was turning to Black Ice or Ballbreaker instead of Back in Black or Highway to Hell.”

That's an extremely gracious way of pointing out that latter-era AC/DC albums are the pits. He goes on to call Rock or Bust “perfectly serviceable.” Let’s pause here for a moment and give this some serious thought: can you imagine anyone, back in the band’s heyday, referring to Highway to Hell or Back in Black as “perfectly serviceable?” This is what it’s come to for AC/DC, Inc: a sycophantic fan base bludgeoned into accepting, after decades of mediocrity, anything the band throws out there. Allow me to finally cast some light on an unpleasant truth: AC/DC haven’t released a good record in 35 years. They have certainly released albums during that time that sold well, but those are meaningless statistics. In a world where people cut each other’s heads off in the name of a supernatural male deity, and people who are the very embodiment of ignorance and narcissism have a serious shot at getting elected to the highest office in the most powerful country on earth, it’s not surprising that millions of slack-jawed miscreants paid money for an album containing the lyrics “we met some girls, some dancers who gave a good time – broke all the rules, played all the fools, yeah yeah they, they, they blew our minds.”

A few weeks back I watched a clip of Axl/DC performing Hell Ain’t a Bad Place to Be, and sat in disbelief when it came time for Angus’ solo: it was, note for note, the same solo he’s been playing since 1977. Same solo. Same outfit. Same striptease act mid-show. Everything the same, for years now, carefully choreographed, with no tolerance for spontaneity. No interest in it, even. The playbook is tattered, its binding spent: release featureless album every five years, tour the world making piles and piles of money playing the same songs and solos over and over and over again.

For his part, Rose has been uncharacteristically gracious, telling Rolling Stone he wants to do right by the band and their fans. And certainly his range is made to order for AC/DC’s requirements. It’s nice seeing such a world-class creep being deferential for once. But at the end of the day, each new AC/DC story is just one more sad piece of evidence proving beyond a reasonable doubt that this band should have hung it up years ago.

The latest such story comes from Cliff Williams, AC/DC’s longtime bassist, who announced he is leaving after the current tour. “Losing Malcolm, the thing with Phil and now with Brian, it’s a changed animal,” he very accurately said during an interview with Gulfshore Life. “It’s been what I’ve known for the past 40 years, but after this tour I’m backing off of touring and recording.”

There’s no reason to believe Angus Young won’t replace Williams and cynically forge ahead with another pointless album and world tour in five years. Then again, maybe this is finally enough for the diminutive guitarist. Maybe after the tour is over he’ll use those five years to reflect on the unfamiliar faces surrounding him on stage every night and realize there really does come a time to call it a day.


But whichever way it goes won’t erase the very sad spectacle of AC/DC 2016: the band as Monty Python’s Black Knight, its limbs hacked away, still mindlessly making a ruckus long after relevance slipped from its grasp.

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